Organizing Committee  

Andrew D. Hanson, Professor, Horticultural Sciences Dept., Univ. Florida (Chair) 
Luz Irina Calderón Villalobos, Head, Genome Editing Research Group, KWS Group 
Catalin Voiniciuc, Assoc. Professor, Horticultural Sciences Dept., Univ. Florida 
Merritt Khaipho-Burch, Research Scientist, Corteva Agriscience 

Overview  

The US and the world urgently need workable, sustainable solutions to major agricultural and related environmental problems. These solutions must be found and rolled out in the next 30 years – but we are running out of time. We cannot spend 30 years simply doing more discovery research; discovery has to translate to real-world products and processes. Synthetic biology (SynBio) – the engineering of biology – is perfectly placed to discover solutions and to translate them, but only if deployed with (i) clear, realistic, stable aims; (ii) coordinated effort; and (iii) cooperation with agricultural scientists. SynBio thus has a huge opportunity for real-world impact. Many universities have genome-editing, plant breeding, and crop management research that can interface readily with SynBio, and systems in place to take ideas to products. But university SynBio faculty hires in plant science and adjacent areas tend to have creative but diffuse and reductionist visions rather than informed and actionable plans for SynBio in crop improvement or other sectors of agriculture and the environment. SynBio’s potential is therefore not being fully realized, in large part due to disconnects between the talented new cohort of synthetic biologists and the realities of agriculture and agribusiness. The proposed Workshop will help to fix these intellectual disconnects and to grow personal networks between scientists in SynBio and agriculture.